Blogging While Black, British and Female: Identity, Representation and Social Impact in the Blogogsphere

This article explores how African Caribbean women in the UK use blogs to engage in online political participation and discursive activism. Previous research examines how Black women use blogs as a medium for empowerment (Somolu, 2007) and as a platform for feminist resistance to raced and gendered discrimination (Steele, 2011). This article builds on the paucity of studies on Black women bloggers by highlighting how African Caribbean women in the UK use blogs to address exclusion and misrepresentation in the mainstream media. The blogosphere is often perceived as a racially neutral space where shared interests across geographical and temporal boundaries limit the significance of racial and ethnic identity. This article highlights the importance that Black women in Britain attach to divulging racial and ethnic identity within the blogosphere and the role that race and ethnicity play in the cultivation of audiences. The constructed narratives of the bloggers in this study highlight Black women’s experience of subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination perpetuated through dominant discourses in the mainstream media. The findings demonstrate how Black British women use blogs to harness social and cultural capital and as an assertive strategy to empower themselves and their communities.